Understanding Financial Documents 101
January 28, 2021
by a searcher from Purdue University in Chicago, IL, USA
Hi Everyone -
New to the community and based in Chicago.
I've always been in sales and business development which gives me great exposure to deal-making fundamentals: negotiating, sales, managing pipeline, revenue projections, general analysis, etc. I struggle with the financial documents sellers have. Part because of my lack of accounting skills and also due to terrible formatting, book keeping, or negligence.
Has anyone found any good resources to get up to speed on accounting fundementals for deals? Most of the things I've found have been too generic and general accounting vs. doing a deal.
Thanks for any recommendations! (any/all other resources welcome too!)
from Campbell University in Emerald Isle, NC 28594, USA
You don't have to be an accounting whiz to be able to understand the financial accounting fundamentals, but at the very least as a searcher, I would say knowing how to interpret the 3 major statements (BS, IS, and CFS) and what changes to one will affect the other. This and the practice of reading financials and bouncing questions to your accountant will be a great learn as you go process as well.
In my very first acquisition, I had to recreate financials from purchase records, payroll documents, etc. to arrive at a more complete picture of what the company was doing (the owner was 65 and not savvy on accounting, but a very shrewd businesswoman and literally had handwritten records for everything!)
DM me as I have a few spreadsheets that may prove useful to understanding the financial statement interactions and high-level search fund structure. email: redacted
from Campbell University in Emerald Isle, NC 28594, USA
https://www.searchfunder.com/profile/adam-borcz